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RESTAURANT: Ole! Tapas Bar


Plata Fria, originally uploaded by ktglick.


It's the end of a long week--no, a long two weeks. It's the beginning of a holiday weekend. You are ready to relax and most importantly to have a drink. Or two. Or three. You tried to go to the bar and it was closed. You had to go to the Mexican place down the street and have a cheap margarita and it was full of Valley losers and an old drunk who tells you that you need to exercise more because your stomach is to big for someone your age. Thanks, jerk. (It was my shirt, I swear! Rob B. did not work my abs out for six months for someone to tell me that!)


So you have to leave there and you drive around and no place is open and then people call from San Francisco to tell you that they are going to your old favorite bar and it's not fair.

And then you come back and the first bar is open. Ole! Tapas Bar. And it's dark, and a Frenchman sits you down on a red velvet sofa and brings you a bottle of wine and a Red Bull and toasted bread with olive spread. And you drink your wine and eat the cold appetizer plate (manchego cheese, marinated olives, roasted red peppers, serrano ham and green beans in balsamic vinaigrette) and chilled almond soup (which tastes like a breakast) and then you eat the hot appetizer plate (calamari, fried honey goat cheese, marinated mushrooms and artichokes, patatas bravas) and then you have an espresso, and ... ahhhh ... now it feels like a holiday.

Next time you will bring your husband and maybe he will try the raw halibut carpaccio in lavendar habanero lychee sauce and tell you what it's like. And maybe you will try the grilled pork chop with saffron apple mashed potatoes and strawberry black bean sauce and tell him what it's like. And maybe you will try a delicious cocktail, like the "Creme Brulee," (Grey Goose Vanilla, Frangelico & Cointreau) or a Caipirinha. And maybe they will not be out of the green apple sorbet, and the Frenchman will bring you plates and plates of bread and olive spread, and it will feel like a holiday again.


Ole Tapas Bar
13251 Ventura blvd
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 986-3190
Cross Street: Fulton Avenue

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Comments

Roonie said…
You're really into food. In LA. I like you already.
7:39 AM
KT said…
Ha ha! Well, I wasn't always in L.A. I lived in S.F. and was spoiled food-wise. But it's still possible to find good stuff down here, you just have to look harder.

Thanks for reading my blogs, I read yours often over the summer as a bar exam study procrastination!
10:27 AM
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